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Unit 2. Primates
The 2% Difference, R. Sapolsky, 2006
1. Is the genetic underpinning of human and chimp brains very different?
2. What is a transcription factor?
3. What does our braininess arise from? .
The Mind of the Chimpanzee, J. Goodall, 1990
1. What example illustrates the meaning of ‘cross-modal transfer of information’?
2. What demonstrates that chimpanzees have some kind of self-concept?
Got Culture, C. Stanford, 2001
1. What does the author list as the two elements of culture?
2. Besides a large brain, what anatomical characteristic must exist for tool cultures to develop?
Why Are Some Animals So Smart?, C. Van Schaik, 2006
1. What does the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis suggest?
2. Why does Van Schaik think that in slowly developing animals living in socially tolerant societies
natural selection will tend to reward a slight improvement in the ability to learn through observation
more strongly than a similar increase in the ability to innovate? .
3. Why is the often-heard suggestion that primates in the wild don’t need tools wrong?
How Animals Do Business, F. de Waal, 2005
1. What does reciprocal altruism explain?
2. Why does partner choice rank as a central issue in behavioral economics?
3. Behavioral economists assume evolution has led to what?
4. Discouraging what is critical for continued cooperation? n
A Telling Difference, S. R. Anderson, 2004
1. What two characteristics are critical to assessing language ability?
2. The bonobo Kanzi clearly has mastery of one characteristic of language: the use of arbitrary symbols.
What two aspects of his use of syntax must be assessed?
3. What does syntax involve beyond merely combining elements into sequences of words?
Unit 3. Sex and Society
What Are Friends For? B. Smuts, 1987
1. What is the assumption underlying the dominance hypothesis? Is this valid?
2.
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What questions was the author trying to answer in her study of the Eburru Cliffs baboon troop?
What two measures allowed the author to determine whether or not baboons were friends?
What is one of the main advantages of friendship for a female?
How does friendship contribute to the reproductive success of both partners?
What's Love Got to Do With It?, M.F. Small, 1992
1. What do humans and chimps have in common?
2. How are bonobos like humans and unlike other primates?
3. What one thing does sex do for bonobos?
4. Why is female alliances serious business?
Apes of Wrath, B. Smuts, 1995
1. What factors promote or inhibit sexual coercion?
2. In humans kin will sometimes help females in abusive situations, but not always. Why not?
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Mothers and Others, S. B. Hrdy, 2001
1. What new evidence suggests how prehuman moms managed to raise such huge and dependent
children?
2. According to W.D. Hamilton, what does evolutionary logic predict that an animal with poor prospects
of reproducing on his/her own should do?
3. What hormonal changes, associated with increased nurturing by males, have been found in marmosets
and in humans?
4. According to Hrdy, if humans evolved as cooperative breeders, the degree of a human mother’s
commitment to her infant should be linked to what?
5. What have several anthropologists and psychologists suggested that babies are up to?
6. What does Hrdy state is different about infant survival in the recent history of mankind compared to
the past? .
7. What three things does Hrdy think makes us human?
Had King Henry VIII's Wives Only Known, M. Deunwals, 2002
1. In 1973, what did Trivers and Willard hypothesize?
2. Cameron suspects that high-fat diets make a difference in the survival of one sex over the other.
How?
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